China and the World of Business • China Business and the World

For those of you prepared to give any credibility to the agreement between Japan and China to develop a 4G mobile phone standard, please take a step back. Apart from the historical distrust between Japanese and Chinese, and the failure of China to come up with cash for little things like, say, royalties on the VCD standard, these folks are just late to the party.

The battle over the next generation of mobile wireless has already been joined, between Intel leading the development and marketing of WiMax and QUALCOMM, with it’s purchase of Flarion, holding out the promise of extending CDMA with Flash-OFDM technology. Both technologies are near-commercial. Any expectation that Japan and China may have to slap something together and beat QUALCOMM, Intel, or both to market appears pretty wishful.

This is another one of these feel-good transnational projects that in the end will produce lots of good feelings but, in all likelihood, little of commercial significance.

On the other hand, expect the project to go forward, and fully expect the Chinese to learn much from it that will redound to their benefit moving forward.